This invention relates to an electrical connector and, in particular, relates to a floating connector in which a movable housing is floatingly coupled to a stationary housing.
With this type of floating connector, even if a mating connector is inserted in a state with some position offset, a movable housing floats according to the position of the mating connector to absorb the position offset, so that it is possible to achieve normal fitting and electrical connection.
For example, this type of floating connector is mounted on a board in the body of an electronic device such as a notebook personal computer and is used for fitting and electrical connection to a mating connector provided in a removable unit such as a disk drive which is removably attached to the electronic device.
This type of floating connector is disclosed in, for example, JP-A-2006-318763.
Referring to FIG. 11, a floating connector disclosed in this patent document has a depth direction D parallel to an insertion/removal direction of a mating connector (not illustrated) and width and height directions W and H which are respectively perpendicular to the depth direction D. This floating connector comprises a stationary housing 610 adapted to be fixed to a board (not illustrated) as a mounting object and a movable housing 620 which is coupled to the stationary housing 610 so as to be floatable in the height direction H through a plurality of flexible contacts 630 (only part of them are illustrated) held in parallel with each other in the width direction W.
The movable housing 620 has a guided portion (hole portion) 622.
On the other hand, the stationary housing 610 has a guide portion (columnar portion) 612 which guides floating of the movable housing 620 in the height direction H while limiting the position of the hole portion 622 in the width and depth directions W and D.
Herein, in this type of floating connector, as the number of contacts (the number of pins) increases, the width of a movable housing increases and thus its weight also increases to apply a greater load to a guide portion of a stationary housing. As a result, there is a possibility of the occurrence of a crack if the floating connector is used for a certain period of time. In order to prevent this, a resin with glass fibers may be used as a material of the stationary housing and the movable housing to ensure the strength of the housings.
In addition, in order to further strengthen the guide portion of the stationary housing, a reinforcing member may be provided at the guide portion of the stationary housing. For example, the floating connector shown in FIG. 11 has a reinforcing member (metal pin) 640 for reinforcing the guide portion 612 of the stationary housing 610. The reinforcing member 640 passes through the inside of the guide portion 612 in the height direction H.
When the floating connector is used for electrical connection to a mating connector provided in a removable unit such as a disk drive as described above, since the removable unit is normally large and heavy, it is expected that a very large load is applied to the guide portion of the stationary housing particularly in the depth direction when the mating connector is fitted to the floating connector.
Under these circumstances, since the reinforcing member is made of the metal pin in the conventional floating connector such as the one shown in FIG. 11, unless the diameter of the metal pin is considerably large, its strength cannot necessarily be said to be sufficient. However, increasing the diameter of the metal pin for ensuring sufficient strength leads to an increase in the size of the overall floating connector and thus further leads to an increase in the size of an electronic device using such a floating connector.